I think some people use tile editors, but I'm not smart enough to know how to do that... I just make a bunch of tiles in GraphicsGale, with an 8x8 grid turned on. Then, with snap-to grid, you can very easily select any 8x8 square that you want with a single click and copy-paste it all over the place, rotating the tile when necessary. I don't know if that's the most efficient way to do it, but it's fun as hell.

@ Mrmo: I'm glad you like it. You were a pretty big inspiration, if only because I've never seen anyone use tiles the way you do.

@ Christoballs: Ah, I tried to mess around more with the colours earlier on, but I found it was kind of distracting to do while also figuring out texture. Plus I didn't really know what I was doing and I think it showed, but it's obviously something that would be worthwhile to pursue. I understand why you suggest to look at Maori, Inuit or African art/masks, but the entire time I was working on this I was kind of peeved about how tribal it looked because often in the cultures that you have mentioned everything is imbued with symbolism. Not only that, but the things from those cultures that we think of as art are often objects that are used in religious ceremonies or have other important things to do rather than lie around in a museum... whereas this piece is essentially just an aesthetic exercise, devoid of any particular meaning. I don't know, it felt "fake" to me that it looks tribal in any way.

I actually really wanted to do something more contemporary with this piece, but something about trying to draw with tiles just lends itself to crazy headdresses. : P

I have the impression I'm looking at a game's tiles through tilemolester. Which is a good thing!

The result is pretty satisfying. If you consider making a series of these or if you want to tweak this, I'd suggest you look for some inspiration through some books on Maori, Inuit or more generally traditional African art, especially the masks.

I think this piece could benefit with a bit more variation in the colour scheme in the tiles composing the face: by varying them more you can highlight features or patterns better, or give an impression of depth. Of course, you may be focusing on pattern and not on depth so I'll let you see about that!